I went to an interesting Parks and Environment Committee
meeting at City Hall on Wednesday hosted by Councillor Paula Fletcher, the
Chair. They had invited experts from the arts, community and academic
communities as well as the TRCA to discuss ideas and opportunities for a new
park vision. The City is initiating a
citywide, multi-year Parks Plan to guide decision-making for our system of
public parkland.
The discussion was all about neighbourhood empowerment and
calls for local grassroots organizations to be embraced instead of merely
tolerated or ignored. It was suggested
by many of the speakers that the City tends to regard parks as “private
property” and that the management model currently employed is too rule-driven,
permit dependent, too standardized and excessively governed by concerns over
liability and CSA standards and renders these public spaces virtually
inaccessible. The committee was told
that community groups should not be treated as supplicants but as partners and
that the City needs to give up its “guardian mentality” so that citizen energy
can be engaged. One speaker went so far
as to say, “Public energy in Toronto is sucked into a black hole of nothingness
– it should be allowed to flower!”
Adam
Vaughn spoke to an idea that’s been kicking around the parks Committee for a
while – the idea of each park having a PIA, a Parks Improvement Association,
made up of local community groups, residents and stakeholders. This sounds a lot like the Public Advisory
Board recommended in the Sam Smith Master Plan from the nineties. Calls from the community for this to be
implemented have been ignored so far by the City’s political
representative.
Hopefully, the tide is
turning.
Posted by Terry Smith
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